WPR13LA122 · ST Clair LANCAIR 360
ST Clair LANCAIR 360 · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure en route
From Ukiah Municipal Airport (KUKI) to Minden-Tahoe Airport (KMEV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA122
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
ST Clair LANCAIR 360
- Aircraft type
- ST Clair LANCAIR 360
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N123ST
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ukiah Municipal Airport (KUKI), Ukiah, CATo Minden-Tahoe Airport (KMEV), Minden-Tahoe, NV
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Electrical system malfunction/failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Having leveled off at cruise altitude, the passenger began to smell an electrical burning odor in the experimental airplane's cabin. Smoke then began to stream from the lower center console to the right of the pilot’s footwell. The passenger attempted to locate the source of the smoke while the pilot initiated an emergency descent. Shortly before landing, the footwell became engulfed in flames. During the landing flare, the airplane struck a group of trees and collided with a berm.
The majority of the airplane was consumed by fire; however, examination of the electrical wiring revealed arcing damage to one of the primary electrical supply lines in the area where the passenger reported the first traces of smoke. The wire connected the master solenoid to the airplane’s main system bus.
It is most likely that the wire’s insulation had become compromised, leading to its electrical conductor coming into contact with a metallic airframe component, resulting in a short circuit and fire. The pilot shut off the master solenoid during the descent, which would have halted the short circuit; but by then the fire had most likely already spread, possibly igniting the fuel supply components in that area. The fact that the master solenoid was off also negated the possibility that the short circuit occurred during the ground impact sequence.
The airplane’s construction consisted of automotive electrical wire and household PVC tubing for electrical conduit. Additionally, the battery and associated master solenoid wiring had been relocated three times since the airplane’s completion; however, it could not be determined if this construction or modification caused or contributed to the short circuit.
Probable cause
An in-flight fire due to an electrical short circuit.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA122
- Event ID
- 20130212X61326
- Case number
- WPR13LA122
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 56307f1057deec7b8a77db3621d4160ecfe112d6793a5ee0e26ff47ca62804b6; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:55:06.532Z.